With Apple’s acquisition of Beats this year, headphones have suddenly become a focal point for the consumer technology industry. If you look closely, though, you’ll realize that they’ve always been there.
随着苹果公司（Apple）斥巨资收购Beats公司，耳机一夜之间成了消费电子科技行业的焦点。其实如果你了解得更深入一些，你会发现耳机从来没有走远。
We take headphones for granted. We forget they’re jammed in our ears or hanging around our neck. They were “wearable” back when the term meant the shirt at the top of the laundry pile. They have been feeding us data from our smartphones since smartphones existed. Yet they have remained at the margins of the wearable tech rush. Until Apple’s $3 billion buy, that is.
我们一直把耳机的存在当成天经地义的事情，甚至忘了我们正把它塞在耳朵里或挂在脖子上。早在“可穿戴”这个词指的是晾衣杆上挂着的衬衣的时候，耳机就已经是真真正正的“可穿戴”之物。自从智能手机发明以来，它就忠实地把智能手机里的信息传递给我们。尽管如此，耳机一直处于可穿戴科技浪潮的边缘地带，直到苹果公司以30亿美元的高价收购了Beats，这种现象才得以改观。
Apple AAPL -0.61% , as the company is wont to do, has said little about whether its acquisition was driven by talent (namely co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre), technology, or something else entirely. All CEO Tim Cook seems to talk about is how much he loves music. Yet in interviews with Fortune, leaders in headphone design and biometric research say that headphones have the ability to be much more than mere private audio listening devices.
苹果对于这笔交易依然保持着平日的低调，很少提起这次次收购究竟是看中了Beats的人才（如创始人杰米o艾欧文和Dr. Dre）、技术，还是别的什么东西。苹果CEO蒂姆o库克只是说他有多么爱音乐。不过在接受《财富》（Fortune）采访时，一些耳机设计和生物计量研究领域的顶尖专家表示，耳机的能力远远不止是作为听音乐的工具而已。
Technophiles have spent the last couple of years obsessing about wearable technology—things like fitness bands, smart watches, and funny-looking glasses intended to give the wearer easier access to information about themselves and the world around them. For headphones, their pre-existing normality may be smart headphones’ ace in the competitive hole.
过去几年来，科技爱好者们无不对可穿戴技术感到痴迷，健身腕带、智能手机和模样古里古怪的智能眼镜等可穿戴设备也层出不穷，为的都是让用户能更轻易地获得关于人们自身和周边世界的信息。至于耳机，由于消费者本就对它十分依赖，这也就成了耳机在可穿戴市场上竞争的一张王牌。
“Headphones were the first mass-accepted wearables,” says Noel Lee, founder and CEO of headphone maker Monster and the lead sound engineer for the original Beats headphones. Beats took that normality a step further by turning high-end headphones into fashion accessories fit for a rock or rap star.
耳机厂商Monster公司创始人兼CEO、Beats公司首席音响师李美圣称：“耳机是第一款大范围被人们接受的可穿戴设备。”Beats公司更是把高端耳机变成了连说唱歌手、摇滚巨星也趋之若鹜的时尚配饰。
But ears also happen to be great sources of biometric information. In many ways, headphones are a more logical place for digital health and sports functions than the electronic wristbands currently in vogue. “You can measure a lot more at the ear than at other parts of the body,” says Steven LeBoeuf, a specialist in ear biometrics at the sensor-design firm Valencell. That includes blood pressure, heart rate, ECG, and core body temperature, which is particularly tough to get from a wristband. Headphones may also be better at health monitoring than wristbands because putting them on is already a part of many people’s daily routines.
人的耳朵恰好也是获取生物计量信息的好地方。从很多方面来看，要想测量人体的健康信息或是实现可穿戴设备的健身功能，从耳机着手应该是比时下流行的智能腕带更合理的选择。传感器设计公司Valencell的耳部生物测量专家史蒂芬o勒伯夫指出：“我们能从耳部测量出的信息要比身体其它部位多得多。”比如血压、心率、心电数据和身体核心温度等，尤其最后一项，很难通过腕带测定。耳机更适合监测人体健康的另一个原因，则是现在很多人早已习惯每天戴着耳机了。
By combining biometric data with other sensors—GPS, an accelerometer, or an advanced sound processing unit—headphones could become a new kind of performance enhancer. “[Your headphones] could figure out if you’re cycling, or hunting, or golfing,” says I.P. Park, CTO of the audio device manufacturer Harman HAR 0.80% . “Based on the situation, maybe there are features and services these headphones could provide you.”
通过把人体的生物体征数据与其它传感器相结合（比如GPS、加速计或者一个先进的声音处理单元），耳机还能够提供更多的妙用。比如音响设备制造商哈曼公司（Harman）的技术总监I.P.帕克说：“大家的耳机能分辨出我们到底是在骑自行车、打猎还是打高尔夫。根据现实情况，耳机或许还能为我们提供一些特殊的功能和服务。”
For instance, when you get on your bicycle, your headphones could automatically let you hear the sounds of nearby cars through your electronic dance music, solving one of the major conflicts between safety and enjoyment for cyclists. Hunters could use specialty headphones to separate game noises from environmental sound. A headphone worn by a football or soccer player could filter out crowd noise and amplify teammates’ voices— a serious blow to Seattle’s “12th Man” or any other deafening fan bases, and a potentially thorny issue for sports commissioners.
比如当你骑自行车的时候，你的耳机可以自动让你在听音乐的同时听见周围汽车的声音，这就解决了安全与听音乐之间的一个大矛盾。猎手可以通过专门的耳机区分猎物的声响与噪声。足球运动员戴的耳机可以过滤观众的噪声，放大队友的声音。这对西雅图海鹰队的“第12人”或者其他震耳欲聋的粉丝团将是个沉重的打击。当然，它也可能将成为体育官员们要应对的一个棘手的问题。
Miniaturization has already nearly made it possible for headphones to pack in all that capability. The recent Kickstarter project for Dash earbuds, a wireless pair of earphones made by a company called Bragi, already cram some biometric sensors, a microphone, Bluetooth, and 4GB of storage into a device meant to fit inside a user’s ear. Park predicts that wireless technology will be typical of future headphones as LTE and Wi-Fi connections spread to smaller electronic devices.
微型化技术的发展使得如今的耳机差不多已经可以实现上述所有功能。比如布拉吉公司（Bragi）最近生产的一款Dash无线耳机小到可以塞进耳孔，却同时搭载了一些生物测量传感器、一个微型话筒、蓝牙装置和4GB的存储空间，真是麻雀虽小，五脏俱全。帕克认为，随着LTE和Wi-Fi连接普及到小型电子设备上，无线技术对于未来的耳机来说将成为司空见惯的事。
Biometrics could also make headphones even more central to the gaming world. There’s what LeBeouf calls “relaxation gaming,” which would use sound feedback to train a user, such as a therapy patient, to enter a relaxed state. LeBoeuf also imagines using headphone biometrics to affect play in more traditional video games. A biofeedback-enabled game might require you to actually get angry to transform from Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk, or a character in a social game could be given a different appearance based on the users’ own fitness.
另外，生物计量技术可能使耳机在游戏界的地位变得越来越重要。比如勒伯夫所说的“放松游戏”可以利用声音的反馈对用户进行训练，比如可以让一个声音患者进入放松状态。另外，勒伯夫还认为，在不久的将来，我们说不定可以利用耳机的生物测量功能来玩传统游戏。比如说在一款需要生物体征反馈的游戏中，如果你想从布鲁斯o班纳变成绿巨人，你就必须真的生气才行；或者在某款社交游戏中，根据用户本人的健身效果，游戏里的人物形象也会被赋予不同的外观。
Music and games may be the gateway drugs, but smart headphones could also make sound the basis for information services of a sort we’ve never seen before. Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her depicted a close relationship between a user and his artificial intelligence-equipped personal assistant, who interacts with him only through an earpiece. Harman’s Park thinks that’s prophetic. “Earphones or headphones are going to become major information hubs, just like smartphones now.”
音乐使游戏虽然能让人上瘾，但是智能耳机的功能远远不止于此。它能使声音成为一种信息服务的基础，发挥出我们难以想象的效力。斯派克o琼斯在2013年的电影《她》（Her）中描绘了主角与他的人工智能助手之间的亲密关系，而他们之间的沟通就是仅仅通过一部耳机。哈曼公司的帕克认为这一点非常有预见性。“耳机将成为一个重要的信息中心，就像今天的智能手机一样。”
“But,” he adds, “a lot of things have to be done along the way.” That includes pushing voice recognition and response technologies much further. “How many people use Google Voice as their dominant interface? It has to be 100% accurate.” The same thing goes for Apple’s Siri.
不过他补充道：“但是要发展到这一步，还有很多工作要做。”包括进一步推动语音识别与应答技术的发展。“有多少人用谷歌的Google Voice当主要界面？它必须要100%的精确。”同理，对苹果的Siri也是一样。
Still, no matter how good natural language processing gets, a full-fledged headphone interface would likely combine voice with gestures through touchpads on the headphones’ surface. Input may also come from head movement, such as nodding your head to one side to skip to the next song.
不过，不管自然语言处理技术发展得多好，一套成熟的智能耳机界面恐怕还是离不开语音控制与手势控制（手势操作可在耳机外壳的触摸板上进行）。另外，大家也可以通过头部运动进行输入，比如将头摆向一边就可以切换到下一首歌。
Smart headphones would be most useful when driven by context rather than command, Park said. He envisions headphones able to anticipate and provide for a user’s needs “based on where you are, based on the current context of your situation. We call it augmented hearing.” That could include things like providing a tour of a museum or describing landmarks in a new city.
帕克认为，智能耳机最能大显身手的时候，是受环境驱动、而非受指令驱动的时候。他畅想道：“根据你所在的地方，所处的环境，”未来的耳就机能够预估用户的需求，提供相应的服务。比如在博物馆里提供导游服务，或是在一座新城市里标出地标建筑等。
And let’s not forget what headphones were originally designed for. With greater context awareness, connectedness, and processing power, “smart” headphones could enhance the audio listening experience. With biometric and location data, smart headphones could tailor music to moods and moments: heavy metal or dance music for the gym, ambient or modal jazz for the wee hours of the morning.
最后我们不要忘了耳机被设计出来的初衷。有了更强的环境感知能力、连接性和处理能力后，“智能”耳机也会改善人们听音乐的体验。比如有了生物体征数据和地理位置数据后，智能耳机就可以根据用户的心情和场合调整音乐——在健身房里播放重金属或舞曲，在子夜时分播放氛围音乐或调式爵士乐。
“The way music gets consumed, we’re slaves to convenience. It’s always on the go, really low fidelity, high noise,” says Marko Plevnik of U.K. consumer research and technology design firm PDD. “It’s almost an add-on to another experience. If headphones can add extra poignancy or meaning to music. That’s a good thing.”
英国消费者研究与科技设计公司PDD的马尔科o普来夫尼克说：“从音乐消费的方式来看，我们都沦为了便利性的奴隶。音乐总是在放，但是保真度很低，噪音很高。听音乐几乎成了其他体验的添头。如果耳机可以向音乐添加额外的情感或意义，那将是件好事。”